When my older son was 3 months old, I started taking him to Jo Jingles classes. They are music and movement classes for babies and children up to the age when they start school. He loved it! He stayed in classes until he started school when he turned 4.After that, his little brother took over. He'd been tagging along to his big brother's classes since he was only a couple of weeks old and he's now three and a half and loves his Jo Jingles classes.The same teacher, Gill, has been teaching both of them throughout. She's very enthusiastic and upbeat and all the kids love her. We have another year before my little one starts school and I had hoped to keep him in her classes until then, but this week Gill announced that, for personal reasons, she will be handing the classes in our area over to another teacher.We will miss Gill and I wanted to make her a small gift as a token of our family's appreciation but didn't know what. Also, her departure has been announced at relatively short notice so I needed something quick.

As always, I asked on Ravelry for ideas. Some patterns were suggested but they weren't quite right. Some people suggested, since I have a lot of different blue yarns in my stash, maybe a stashbuster project of some type might be suitable. Some very kind fellow designers even offered me copies of their own patterns. I tried browsing patterns in my "favourites" list, and one of them was a flat scarf in a gradient yarn in a very simple Old Shale pattern. I liked the effect of the stitch with the yarn but a flat scarf wasn't quite what I had in mind. Then I pictured a ripple cowl, using the Old Shale pattern but in stripes of each of my blue yarns.

You will notice this isn't the traditional Old Shale pattern. It has extra rows both before and after the eyelet-and-decreases row to make the ridges a little deeper and more pronounced. I hope you like it, and more importantly I hope Gill does too!

Ripples for Gill

You will need 3.5mm (US4) knitting needles for working in the round. If using a circular needle, I suggest a 16" cable.The cowl is worked in fingering weight yarn. Yarn requirements will depend on how many stripes you want to make, but allow about 30 yards of yarn for each individual 6-round repeat, plus about another 10 yards each for the starting and finishing borders. I used just over 200 yards in total, using seven different colours and making ten stripes. This makes a finished cowl of about 20" in diameter and about 7" high, with each 18 st/6 row ripple pattern repeat measuring 2 3/4" across and 1/2" tall.

Ripple section:Round 1: K all stsRound 2: K all stsRound 3: *K2tog three times, (YO, K1) six times, K2tog three times; rpt from * to end of roundRound 4: K all stsRound 5: P all stsRound 6: P all sts

Rpt these six rounds as many times as you wish, changing colours at the end of each six-round repeat if desired. When your cowl has reached the desired height, work the finishing border in the colour currently in use.

To finish: Weave in ends to secure any loose ends at colour changes. Wash your work according to the yarn manufacturer instructions. Squeeze (don't wring) out excess water and lay flat to dry. If necessary, hide any yarn ends not dealt with at the earlier weaving-in stage. Wear and enjoy!

I have a group of knitting friends. We all met on a Ravelry group. What started as online chats grew into lunchtime meets and from there into weekends away and we have become real friends. It doesn't matter that we live in different countries around the world. Most of us are in the UK but others live in the USA, Canada, Belgium, France and Norway. One of the marvels of the internet is the way it can bring like-minded people together no matter where they are in the world and friendships can be formed between people who would otherwise never have met, and we all need a friend sometimes.

Recently one of the group experienced a personal tragedy. Her grown-up son suddenly and unexpectedly died. In a situation like that, friends want to do something to help, but there's nothing that can be done except to be there, even if it has to be as a source of love and concern from across the internet. As a group we sent flowers and a card, but we wanted to do more to show our friend how much we care, so we did what we do best. We knitted.

We made a blanket, just simple garter stitch squares, but 120 of them. 22 members of the group spanning three continents, worked together to get those 120 squares knitted in a rainbow of colours (although concentrating on pink, since that is the recipient's favourite colour). A spreadsheet was drawn up to ensure we had a good spread of colours and to get the numbers just right. Squares were posted to two friends, one in the UK and one in the US who then brought them with her to the UK to help to assemble the finished blanket. Yes, the friendship means so much that she was able and willing to fly across the Atlantic to help coordinate putting the massive project together.

Even assembling the blanket wasn't without hiccups. We had to get all the squares, the people to sew them together and edge the blanket, and its recipient all in one place without arousing suspicions about what was to be a surprise gift. It was all arranged, the date, the time, the place. Unfortunately the recipient of the blanket then had a change of plans and couldn't make it, and of course we couldn't tell her why that might be an issue. Never mind, she was invited over anyway and the surprise was presented, even if it was still in the form of a collection of unconnected squares.​A weekend of blanket assembly was to continue to complete the gift, but then another bump in the road. The friend who had kindly offered her house as sewing space for some and weekend accommodation for others was taken ill and had to go to hospital! No matter, we could use her dining table anyway to put this 5 foot by 6 foot woolly hug together. Fortified by snacks and drinks provided by her very tolerant husband and mother-in-law, a team of stitchers spent several days finalising the layout and then making 218 seams, weaving in 240 ends, and crocheting around 264 inches of the outside edge to form a border and finish off the blanket. Luckily she was well enough to make it home to help with finishing the blanket by the end of the weekend sewing bee.​​

​I feel so lucky to have such a terrific group of knitting friends. It didn't matter how much any one individual contributed. The fact is that this was a group project, meant to bring comfort to a friend at a time of need. Every friend played her part whether it was knitting one or more squares, planning and organising squares or people, sewing seams, crocheting the border. I really felt the power of friendship that weekend and I'm so proud to have been able to play a part in it, even if I ended up seaming sitting in the middle of the dining table! (Don't worry, no tables were harmed during the making of this blanket!)​

June's pattern is out! Field of Sheaves is the brother of Little Lines, and is a bottom-up vest for children aged up to 7 years. Worked in the round to the armholes, the vest is then divided and the back and front are worked flat and joined at the shoulders with a three-needle cast-off. The edgings for the armholes and V-neck are picked up and worked on afterwards.
I really like the stitch pattern on this one. It works well for variegated yarns as well as solid or semi-solid colourways. It's available in my Ravelry store using the link below (or click through the photograph), or on Patternfish.com

There is a reason why I tend to be a fairly monogamous knitter, with one or two projects on the go at once, and that reason is that I see my knitting progress in terms of finishing things. It doesn't matter how much work I'm getting done on things, if they aren't getting finished I find it harder to see that I'm achieving something. (You're looking for a project knitter rather than a process knitter? Look no further!)Recently I have been feeling pretty stalled in my knitting. Last week I posted about starting a new pair of socks (that I felt I oughtn't to have done), but I needed to get something finished and done, and those socks were completed last night. I'm now back to my other two longer-term projects which seem to be getting nowhere.In order to get myself back on track and actually finishing stuff, I decided to follow in the footsteps of Baldrick and concoct a Cunning Plan! Actually it's not all that cunning, it's pretty sensible really, but it makes me feel like I'm moving forward just by committing to it, and it goes like this.It's a new month. I count my stash by weight and I reconcile the figures at the end of each month so I know have a clear 30 days before I need to run the numbers again.So I am putting my shawl design to one side, only temporarily, to work exclusively on my Elphaba. That should take me no more than two weeks, and then I can get back on with the shawl. It will give me a stash-out number for June, even if I finish nothing else. Then I will work on the shawl exclusively until it is done. It's supposed to be for a KAL which ends on July 4th, although I can't see me finishing by then, but that doesn't matter. Once it's done it will be out of the way and I can move on to something else again.

And for a humorous ending, having started on with the Elphaba, I found myself in need of two stitch markers I hadn't anticipated in order to place the bust darts correctly. Using whatever was to hand, I ended up marking my stitch with part of a plastic minion. It does the job perfectly, but now my knitting is looking at me, which is hilarious and just a tiny bit creepy!​